Joseph Hellweg
Contact Information
Joseph Hellweg is a cultural anthropologist and associate professor of religion. He has worked among dozo hunters in Côte d’Ivoire (Hunting the Ethical State, U. Chicago Press, 2011), N’ko healers in Guinea and Mali (Living the City in Africa, eds. Obrist, Arlt & Macamo, LIT Verlag, 2013), and trans women and gay men in Côte d’Ivoire (Public Religion and the Politics of Homosexuality in Africa, eds. van Klinken & Chitando, Routledge, 2016). He is past president of the Mande Studies Association and co-editor-in-chief of its journal, Mande Studies (Indiana University Press). He is deputy editor at the Journal of Religion in Africa (Brill) and co-editor of the “Religion in Transforming Africa” book series for James Currey/Boydell & Brewer (UK); and he has published in Africa, the African Studies Review, Africa Today, Afrique contemporaine, Journal of Africana Religions, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, JRAI, and in several edited collections.
Web Feature
2012. Côte d’Ivoire Is Cooling Down? Reflections a Year after the Battle for Abidjan.
I compiled, edited, and contributed two pieces to this collection of seventeen brief essays on current, recent, and historical conditions in Côte d’Ivoire. The essays pay particular attention to the post-electoral violence of 2010-2011. The collection appears as one of the “Hot Spot” features on the website of the journal, Cultural Anthropology.
Guest Edited Journal
2004. Guest Editor, Special Issue: “Mande Hunters, Civil Society and the State,” Africa Today 50 (4).
Articles
Forthcoming. “Reading Urbanity: Trans-Urban Assemblages in the N’ko Literacy and Healing Movement of West Africa,” in Living the City (edited collection on urbanization in Africa), to be published by Lit Verlag, Berlin.
2009. “Hunters, Ritual, and Freedom: Dozo Sacrifice as a Technology of the Self in the Benkadi Movement of Côte d’Ivoire,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 15: 36-56.
2006. “Manimory and the Aesthetics of Mimesis: Forest, Islam, and State in Ivoirian dozoya,” Africa 76 (4): 461-484.
2004. “Encompassing the State: Sacrifice and Security in the Hunters’ Movement of Côte d’Ivoire,” Africa Today 50 (4): 3-28.
Media Coverage of My Work on Dozo Hunters
2011. “Comment on Ivory Coast, Disarmament, and the Dozos,” Council on Foreign Relations, My Posting on the Blog of Amb. John Campbell.
2011. “Dozos – ‘Savvy Political Actors’,” IRIN News Service (of the United Nations), Interview by Nancy Palus.
2011. “Dozo as Protector, Dozo as Assailant,” IRIN News Service, My Book Cited and Quoted by Nancy Palus.
